14 July 2017

There is a big difference between protecting freedom of speech and providing, like Berkeley does, a well paid platform for a hate preacher with academic credentials of dubious quality*.

This headline might be a tad too sensationalist, I feel, but it is not mine. I am not keeping a list of all dangerous American professors, of course. For all I know, it might be somebody else, a totally unknown one, from an obscure institution of higher education. One that is right now putting the final bits on the Doomsday Machine in his basement.

Professor Bazian, if you check his page at Berkeley's website, doesn't look very dangerous:

It is not that I would rush to enroll in these courses, but being one who is into "othering" all religions equally, I might have been inclined to take the AAS 132. To pick up a few useful tips, you know. Otherwise, what can I say: the two courses above are only a short sampler of the myriad of various "studies" that are taught all over US of A and produce hordes of unemployable (with good reason too) graduates with a vague smattering of "ejukayshen" on their pristine brains.

However, some people who do keep tabs on a few selected professors, are not stopping at the Berkeley's website. Canary Mission, for one, has done a sterling job of scrutinizing the good professor, with the result that is a must read. I shall quote only a few selected accomplishments of the man:

Bazian is a leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. He declared September 23, 2014 an “International Day of Action” to call for a complete boycott of Israel on campuses across the United States on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.Bazian has linked the “liberation of Palestine” with Muslim theology and has reportedly promoted a verse in the Hadith calling for the murder of Jews to establish the “Islamic State of Palestine.”***Bazian writes prolifically against Israel, publishing his work on his personal website and in other online sites including Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada. He is the author of an anti-Israel book titled “Palestine … it is something colonial”.

Of course, there is more, much more in the article, but I don't want to spoil your reading any more. You shall learn that the learned professor should by now teach a most advanced Anti-Zionism course (909 or whatever the number is for such level), so successfully he has erased the thin line between the hated Zionists and the hated Jooz.

The picture of professor Bazian, drawn by the Canary Mission, doesn't require further details, methinks. However, a series of questions should be asked regarding Berkeley this famous institution of higher education, this prodigious production line of genius, second to none**. I realize that Berkeley has been for many (too many?) years a strongly left-leaning institution and goes from the left to more left as time goes.

First of all, seeing as how enormously frisky is professor Bazian in his extracurricular activities: isn't such a talented man, obviously a leader, seriously under-occupied by the university?
Then, if the answer to the previous question is negative, can't he be advised to seek a more fulfilling occupation elsewhere? I understand that he is, most probably, a tenured professor, but there are ways and means - if there is a will.
And, the last but not the least: while freedom of speech should be protected by all means, does such prodigious fountain of hate and incitement fit the requirements of an educational outfit of such a high standing?

To summarize: isn't it time to drum the professor of hate out of his lofty position?

(*) Even if we are talking about Berkeley's own graduate.
(**) If you believe this, for instance:

(***) In 1999, The Detroit News reported that Dr. Bazian had said, “The Day of Judgment will not happen until the trees and stones will say, ‘Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”
Dr. Bazian denies that he ever said those words. “I would never use that statement,” Dr. Bazian told O’Reilly.

11 July 2017

It is a long time since this here blog dabbed in the pictures of nice ladies, so... no, this is not really the reason for this picture at all. It is simply that the person in the picture is being presented as one of the more powerful tentacles of the Kremlin in general and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in particular. When even our provincial Times of Israel opens its main page with a huge font headline:

How can one be not thrilled by that? The point of the (slightly poisoned) arrow is, of course, this "Putin-linked lawyer" bit. How sharp it is? So I let my fingers do some surfing in the murky waters of the 'net, with assistance from the kind Google, may his/her name be blessed.

But first a look back, several days ago, when an allegedly explosive news appeared first in that august bastion of progressive thought, NYT:

Aha, I said to myself, with another few million surfers: finally the Pandora box is getting opened, and the mills of justice are going to start milling much faster. That is, till I have encountered the following pathetic sentence in this "explosive" article:

The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.

What? If anything, this is not an accelerator of the said mills of justice - rather a wrench in the works.

Nevertheless, this kind of the James Bond story, with a nice looking Russian lady thrown in for thrills (the infamous KGB Swallows come to mind, surely), couldn't leave one indifferent. So one googles.

Ms Natalia Veselnitskaya isn't, apparently, hiding in some inaccessible corners of the fast FSB/SVR empire, being at beck and call of Vladimir Vladimirovich. No, she is quite openly active on Facebook, where she presents herself as a managing partner in a Moscow firm of lawyers and quite openly tells all about her fight against Magnitsky Act. More about her in English here and here. While the Magnitsky Act by itself was a good deed of the US government and the fight against it was definitely approved and, most probably, financed by the Russian government, to derive from this a link to Vladimir Vladimirovich is more than just reaching. It is a kind of hyperbole good only for cheap headlines and cheap journalists... but wait, we are talking about progressive press here... oops.

So what could we learn from the whole brouhaha? Nope, it ain't a Pandora box, that's for sure. By the way, the real Pandora box seems to have been a sealed pottery vase. In our case it turned out to be a crock of crapola.

And the only man that is still laughing is the one in Kremlin. Watching the travesty of the ongoing witch hunts and the administration busy at counterattacking the media, instead of doing what the government is meant to do - how could the man not laugh? At least, from all that we know about his habits, he is not laughing out loud.

08 July 2017

It is possible to be a friend with a person you have never met. It is possible to grieve when a malady that knows no mercy takes him away.

Peter's life could provide a writer with not a small amount of inspiration, but I am not going to tell the story here. Peter was a man of uncompromising integrity, and his last years were good and full of happiness, largely thanks to Kate. Till the fate intervened.

02 July 2017

There is nothing new in the notion that for a raving anti-Semite in the usual anti-Zionist guise nothing is sacred. As nothing is new in the notion that the British Labour party has lately become a welcoming safe harbor for this thriving mob of progressive thinkers.

For full disclosure: my beloved uncle was one of the many (disproportionately many) young Jews that went to Spain to fight against Franco, losing several of his good friends, enduring the fate of other "displaced persons" in the French camps, joining the Red Army and fighting with distinction till the demise of the Nazi regime.

So when I see how a piece of human refuse uses a solemn and politics-free occasion to throw his feces at Jews, it surely boils my blood. Wish I could have been there... But see for yourself.